Freakin vagrants

I just visited silver to check out the area because I am moving there soon. I thought it was a great town and the schools are highly ranked and the scenery is great with the mountains and trees and such. Home prices were a little higher than I expected but that is ok because that is usually a sign of a good economy. But then I saw all the homeless people or at least homeless looking people everywhere. This is not a good economic sign so how does this match up an obvious high poverty/unemployment/vagrancy rate coupled with 400k$ houses. Someone explain. And what is up with that scary ditch/hobo jungle right smack In the tourist area that is supposedly a park. So would not let my kids walk thru there alone. Does SC have any rules about squatters and vagrants and crazy disturbed people walking around. Cause I saw the cops walk right past some of your typical hippie/homeless/drug users that were congregating to do business and generally annoy and scare normal humans

I just visited silver to check out the area because I am moving there soon. I thought it was a great town and the schools are highly ranked and the scenery is great with the mountains and trees and such. Home prices were a little higher than I expected but that is ok because that is usually a sign of a good economy. But then I saw all the homeless people or at least homeless looking people everywhere. This is not a good economic sign so how does this match up an obvious high poverty/unemployment/vagrancy rate coupled with 400k$ houses. Someone explain. And what is up with that scary ditch/hobo jungle right smack In the tourist area that is supposedly a park. So would not let my kids walk thru there alone. Does SC have any rules about squatters and vagrants and crazy disturbed people walking around. Cause I saw the cops walk right past some of your typical hippie/homeless/drug users that were congregating to do business and generally annoy and scare normal humans

Well this is a simple one to explain. For years, many area residents (not by any means a majority) have taken pity on these transients (most of whom are on the public dole). Police and courts have been lenient with them (at one time the Silver City Police Department was forbidden from being proactive with them) because of a small number of bleeding-heart liberals from other parts of the country where transients, aggressive panhandlers and homeless are tolerated EVERYWHERE. As for most residents in this county, we are sick of these idiots being everywhere. Because of the above attitude, these people have started their own system of communicating that Silver City is the place to be. They can come here, be allowed to filthy-up downtown, live in the Big Ditch Park, get free services from Border Area Mental Health and become a strain on public resources here. Remember, many of them are menatlly ill and maintain the lifestyle BY CHOICE! I'm sick of the mentally ill walking the streets under these circumstances, what about MY rights and the good of the community? Police are villified when they have an incident involving the mentally ill. Tell the mental health profession to put on a ballistic vest and face some of their "Clients" when they are drunk, on drugs, refusing to take their FREE meds or are violently acting out in public, putting others at risk. Unfortunately, the Silver City Police Department is more concerned with it's mandatory quota system (there is another recent posting about this by someone else) than they are about quality of life and business in the town. Silver City/Grant County really is a nice place to live, but the area has issues -- just like anywhere else. Don't allow this to spoil your image of our town and county.

Those are not necessarily homeless, they could also be our downtown business people, some of them look like vagrants. Any time you get the down to earth artistic types they tend to shy away from baths and combs.

It is good to read that someone from somewhere else is saying something that seems to be kept in the attic, like loony's of old. I totally agree this area seems to have more than it's quota of seriously psychologically dysfunctional people for the amount of population there is. As one with personal experience with some really sad cases, there really DOES need to be some kind of group home with supervision and none of this namby pamby stuff, these people who are seriously psych challenged, they should be in a group home and given serious help. I thought that was the latest good idea to be put into law since the mess in Conn. No need to wait till someone goes on a rampage and we're on more than the Albuquerque news. And I totally agree about downtown. Most people I know won't even go downtown, but maybe once a year or at best, 5 times a year because they tell me it's dangerous and they get tired of the drunk trolls and the hardcore panhandling. I get it about a lot of aspects of society and how it is with funding and all this happy crap, but damn people. This town really could be making more effort to get the scary people REAL help they need and that doesn't always mean jail.

One more thing. This biz with people camping in the Ditch or even hanging out in the Ditch: There's been some nasty fires in this town from homeless or drunks. And it worries on me with all this drought how long before that Ditch is torched and a large portion of Silver City is decimated? It's not a cheery thought. That Ditch runs all the way to PA. All the way through town. There is no or little water in it once you head north past the police station. Scary thought if there was ever an uncontainable fire in the Ditch. Just sayin....

It is good to read that someone from somewhere else is saying something that seems to be kept in the attic, like loony's of old. I totally agree this area seems to have more than it's quota of seriously psychologically dysfunctional people for the amount of population there is. As one with personal experience with some really sad cases, there really DOES need to be some kind of group home with supervision and none of this namby pamby stuff, these people who are seriously psych challenged, they should be in a group home and given serious help. I thought that was the latest good idea to be put into law since the mess in Conn. No need to wait till someone goes on a rampage and we're on more than the Albuquerque news. And I totally agree about downtown. Most people I know won't even go downtown, but maybe once a year or at best, 5 times a year because they tell me it's dangerous and they get tired of the drunk trolls and the hardcore panhandling. I get it about a lot of aspects of society and how it is with funding and all this happy crap, but damn people. This town really could be making more effort to get the scary people REAL help they need and that doesn't always mean jail.

Agree, yes. However the reality of it is that our hospitals will kick these "People" to the curb with a bag of pills minutes-to-hours after they are brought in by EMS or police. They are right back on the streets because no one wants to really discuss the cost and necessities of effective programming for the mentally ill. We closed the "Asylums" years ago when the "Wonder" drugs (hundreds of 'em) replaced good 'ole Thorazine and states saved millions in shutting down these vast repositories of psychological flotsam-and-jetsam of our society. So what is the answer? This is yet another dirty little secret that no self-preserving politician will even broach, much less openly discuss. At what point does an individual's behavior threaten the safety of the community? Does that individual belong in jail (as there are no other viable choices)? Maybe we should stop the idiot Federal Government from spending us into the poorhouse overseas and infuse some of those dollars into our states, cities and communities rather than supporting half the third-world. Currently, a person in New Mexico who is found unfit to stand (criminal) trial by reason of mental defect CANNOT be tried or confined, the charges are dismissed and they kicked to the curb. Sound familiar?

Its good to hear that silver city residents are also unhappy with the homeless problem. I know that there are political and economic difficulties involved in the long term treatment of the mentally disturbed. Walking the streets waiting to go off like a time bomb is not the place for them. I read a post about the penny park fire( I went there with my kids when I was there---great place). Anyway there is all this back and forth about gangs and maybe they did it. Who knows but there is another post right next to it about a drifter and the plaza fire ( except drifter is actually from SC). Hmm... From the outside looking in it is more plausible to believe that one of crazy disturbed walked a block or so out of there way than it is to believe that "gangs" (which honestly i didnt see) did it in a turf war. Just sayin. Now about the ones that are not insane just indigent, it is easy to regulate pan handling and overnight camping with city/county ords codes laws. I have seen this work in other areas (west coast). Where it became a problem. Sure it is hard to deal with the logistics of the arrested but after a while word will get out around the hobonet that SC is not the place to be. And then maybe we can move over to the next challenge of convincing the ambition challenged 20 somethings that dreadlocks and an herb garden do not alleviate societies need for them to get a job and pay into the system. Funny how all these anti big government types are pro government on the first of the month or is it the 5th I forget

Sorry to have offended. I am not evil nor heartless. Pragmatic yes. Offering ideas on the topic of transients and mentally disturbed does not make me a bad person. These are common civic/municipal challenges throughout history around the globe. The last part about the dreadlocks may be viewed as offensive but think about it. If you are a true " hippy" and growYour own food and live off grid barter and leave a small footprint and sustain yourself then great move in next door. I am talkin about those that spray on a little patchouli oil and milk that identity as a way to basically set out the " system". Now if they were truly and completely outside the system that would be ok, to each thier own. However if they are payin rent with a fed gov welfare check and buying groceries with ebt/wic then they are part of the system whether they want to admit it or not. The problem is the system works based on the idea of the majority of the populace working and paying in taxes and such so that these benefits can be funded and allocated to the small percentage that need them do to a "temporary" situation or a disability. The able bodied person who collects benefits when they could work is the problem. Generational welfare and such are examples. I threw in that quip about the first of the month to drive home the irony of it all when you think about the typical counterculture ideals and thier self evidant fallacy. In short a lot of the hippy culture has been watered down and this generation has got it twisted. Being a real hippy on a sustainable farm is a lot of work and a respectable existence. Getting dreads and a container garden while use gov handouts to pay rent and shop at albertson has about zero to do with the sustainable living template embracedBy "hippies"

Fair enough Watson. I did get on a soapbox and I will admit to making broad generalizations. Even worse I am making these broad strokes concerning people and a community I don't really know. I apologize. After a long talk with the better half ( far more tolerant and open than me)I am working on open mindedness but obviously it is a work in progress. I want to be a part of the community some day and i am getting the feeling that I may need to be a little more flexible and less self absorbed. Silver is different than anything I have been around. It is taking me awhile to adjust to the idea of me changing instead of changing the town to fit me.

It's easy to fear and label people if we don't know them and see them as different from us. Making the assumption that the "vagrants" being referred to here are on welfare and/or mentally ill, and vagrant for that matter is a pretty extreme jump to make. I hear a lot of fear here and I would like to invite you to find compassion and kindness in your heart and you may have a totally different experience of people who seem different from you. No matter a person's situation, lifestyle etc we all have way more in common with each other than not.

When a person has lived here and known a bunch of these people who are 'mentally ill' or vagrants/alkie trolls, the true homeless, and as a person who has had a variety of interactions with said people, I've run out of compassion. As one who has been used, abused and physically threatened by the above mentioned, I'm super cautious now about even saying 'hello' to someone. I'm not talking out of fear. I'm talking as someone who has experience and who has lived here plenty long enough to know what is going on. Sob sisters are always fast to cry compassion for people who end up seriously hurting others or themselves and then whine for something to be done. And now there's a case of a little toddler being allegedly murdered by someone I reckon Silver Citian would say 'oh, have compassion.' I have compassion all right. For the family that is suffering from grief and pain of loosing such a cute and sweet little child.

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